photo saturday: lego space marines

I have most of a face again.

The lower lid on my right eye works again properly, my forehead emotes and everything, basically I'm kind of at the same stage now as I was when I woke up originally the day this whole Bell's Palsy thing happened. I can't quite make all of my mouth do what it's supposed to, but it's coming along nicely.

Yay.

After having grabbed a couple of plywood "trays" from Lincraft a couple of weeks back, and then having used the leftover stain from my bedside table project (based on, but not identical to this one) back when I moved into the Wellington Square apartment last week, this week I put three coats of varnish on it (leftover from the same project) and actually sanded it back between (something I didn't do with the bedside table) and then lined it with purple felt (well, the small one I totally lined, bottom and sides, the other I just did the bottom), so now I have a pretty good looking dice box that splits into two possible dice trays (or dice storage and a dice tray).

And yeah, I know I made a dice tray the little while back with a photo frame, but the base of that was a bit wonk and the dice continually rolled into the corners. It was pretty though.

But the new one is very cool. Problem being I don't have a way to keep it shut right now. And it takes up more room than my pencil case. But it's pretty. And I'll use it eventually.

Also, I have a fuckton of dice. Not really news, but seeing it in a different container kind of reinforces the idea.

Anyway, rewinding... I made a metric fuckton of chilli for dinners this week. I thought that perhaps I wouldn't have enough meat or whatever, but no... I had more than enough, between the beef and the pork and the canned beans and the corn and almost every can or jar of tomato in the house... it made tons.

I will say that I think possibly the "chilli powder" I made up with things that I had in the house the first time I made chilli this season was better than the packet stuff I used this time. I'll have to experiment with that again to be sure though.

Tuesday morning I got out of the shower to discover a giant spider (relatively speaking) just chilling on the edge of the sink. Definitely an instance where clothes are vastly superior to standing there in a towel. But I got him into an empty Nutella container and let him go outside.

Wednesday was DnD day, the day game was... fine. As it seems is always the case, it took us a long while to get our collective act together (which is at least partially also a DM issue, but whadyagunnado), and then a big giant battle. And maybe I did a bad thing at the end by using a spell that still had like 9 minutes left on it to stir up the area, wake up a bunch of bad guys and set us up for who knows what next week.

The night game was... not our usual game. Our DM wasn't available for... reasons (I dunno, and honestly, at this point, I don't really care), so I put forward the option of playing here at my place with me running, but we ended up going to one of the other people's place and her husband ran, which he's done before. It also meant that we got to play the characters who have been together since level 1 about two years ago. And they're now level 15 at the end of Wednesday's game.

It was nice to visit with those characters honestly... they have a very different relationship than the Out of the Abyss characters we've been playing for the last year and a bit. They are beasts though... but they've been beasts pretty much since the beginning. It has always been a good mix of abilities (and people for the most part) to be honest.

Friday I had my chiro appointment, which I was very much in need of. And I had a wander around town for a bit.

Today was, unsurprisingly, yet again, not much of anything.

Given that the weather is going to be warmer next week (urgh), I won't be making soup... I mean I could have, but I'm not gunna. Instead I've bought a bunch of chicken and I'm going to probably do a big oven baked chicken breast thing on Monday night, then invent variations throughout the week. I forsee a disaster by about Thursday... Wednesday at the earliest.

The supermarket was supermarkety... then we came back here, killed a bunch of time and ended up going into the city again for random wandering (I swear, we're going to have an actual plan and do an actual thing next week).

On a related note, fucking Christmas decorations are now available in the shops. As much as I think that Australia shouldn't be trying to do Halloween, there shouldn't be Christmas decorations in the shops until AFTER Halloween. It's like hot cross buns... they shouldn't be in the shops in January. But I acknowledge in both cases that it's a losing battle. And I'm also part of the problem because I at the very least look at the decorations as soon as I encounter them.

Mostly because there is some fucking tasteless tat out there in the world, even in the more expensive stores. Plus the amount of Scandinavian inspired animals, mythology and iconography of late is just weird. Not to mention everything having way too much glitter.

And nothing says "Christmas" like an iridescent crystal (clear plastic) lobster...

That's it really...

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photo saturday: up up and away

Well, I have three quarters of a functional face.

I'm definitely on the mend, basically I can use a big boy spoon and drink out of both a mug and a water bottle without the aid of a straw. It's the little things really.

Given that my lip/mouth muscles were the first thing to go, I'm guessing they're going to be the last things to come back, but there's improvement, so that's all I care about right now.

But rolling back...

Tooting my own horn for a minute, I'm pretty damn good at thick soups that include too much potato (potatoe... damn now both versions look wrong... although it seems the version with an E is the archaic... anyway)... this week was more chicken, chorizo and potato chowder, which I made good and thick. And that meant that I had to resort to spoons instead of straws. But it was fucking tasty.

DnD is, for the foreseeable future anyway, a one day a week event. And for right now, I'm okay with that.

The day game was us finishing off the sidebar game from a couple of weeks ago. And it was fun. Stressful at the end... but designed that way I think (especially since it was updated from an older edition of DnD). I'd also enjoy having the same DM run some stuff for us again later, even if he is a little too fond of using all manner of spiders as monsters (which this adventure had in spades).

The evening game... also stressful. But again, good stressful. And contrary to what I assumed last week, we spent the whole four hour session stuck in "the past", which interestingly seemed like it might have been an alternate version of history... a parallel timeline if you will. But there we were without all our fancy armour and weapons and magic items and doodads... fighting some pretty high level monsters. The one interesting thing, and I'm not sure if the DM fulled planned this or not, was that "in universe" there are three bad guys we met at the prison the first time around and we killed two of the three later... but in this "alternaverse" we killed the same two, much earlier timeline wise, but still. Odd.

And I got to have a very on brand freakout in character, so that was nice.

Thursday was Haircut Day... so I headed up the hill to Tink's place... on the correct day, which makes a difference given the recent past. Cut and paste the usual hair... perhaps more in the silver fading to white blonde vein, but otherwise usual. Weirdly someone she knows is also currently afflicted with Bell's Palsy also... what are the odds?

Friday was... urgh... let's just call it paperwork day. I mean it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but also, pointless busywork. Adventurer's League DnD decided with the start of Season 9 that they would change everything around again... after only having totally changed everything around at the beginning of Season 8. Once again, file under "It wasn't broke to begin with, so you should have left it the fuck alone". But it also means that I needed to do all the logsheet "paperwork" for all sixteen active characters I currently have. Even if one of them was literally just putting in the Season 9 logsheet in front of the Season 8 conversion logsheet. The rest of them I've pulled out of the drawer at least once in the last year, which is nice.

But it was a lot of fuckery. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the fuckery (because paperwork and whatnot), but if it hadn't happened I wouldn't have been sad for lack of fuckery.

I also had another ciabatta loaf "evolving" all day. I'd made the dough last thing on Thursday before I went to bed, but it needs 18 hours plus another 2 once it's been shaped into a loaf, so I took a break late afternoon to get it from the "scary growing thing in a bowl" to, you know, bread shaped.

The on-going problem with fresh bread is that it is in fact both fresh and bread. Which is just dangerous. I did mitigate that a little by shaping what should be one loaf into two separate loaves... and it worked out pretty well. I do wanna try it as four small loaves or perhaps giant rolls would be the better description.

Also add cheese... because cheese bread.

Today was... look, our Saturday excursions are kinda dull more often than not... it is what it is.

I'm planning on making chilli again this week... because my chilli has been awesome historically (as in the last two times I made it).

Otherwise the supermarket was the supermarket. And look, I know that getting up before 9am to go to work on a Saturday morning isn't anybody's idea of a good time, but you could at least pretend to be an alive and functional human being, Check Out Girly.

Anyway... there was shopping, there was unpacking, there was general time wastage.

Ma wanted to go look at something in Big W... so off we went. There are some benefits to being financially unencumbered... one of which is not impulse buying a giant skeletal spider for $50. It was awesome and the legs were articulated and everything, but what the fuck do I need with a giant skeletal spider?

We poked around in general, grabbed a couple of useful but not essential things. Ma found the thing she was looking for but then made no decision about it one way or the other. So business as usual there.

And that was pretty much that. We came back here, watched the later half of a movie on TV and then Ma headed home.

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photo saturday: peli can't

Hi and welcome to this week's episode of "Yani Has Half A Functional Face", I'm your host, Yani, and I have half a functional face.

Yeah... there really isn't any dramatic news regarding the Bell's Palsy... I mean it's not any worse than it was last weekend, which is good, but it's also not any better. Which is understandable, since I think it's just going to gradually improve for the next month rather than dramatically coming back. I mean I could be wrong, but that makes the most sense to me.

But, I'm... frustrated. I'm tired of only being able to make half of an expression. I'm tired of having to drink all liquids with a straw or risk dribbling on myself. I'm tired of not being able to eat things properly. I'm tired of taping my eye shut while I sleep (yeah, that's about as fun as it sounds), and I'm going to have to do something about that because I'm pretty sure the application and removal of tape to the soft skin around my eye is definitely doing a number on said skin and irritating it. I'm tired of that eye just being weird. I'm also tired of not being able to form words properly.

Honestly, I'm just feeling a little sorry for myself. I'm okay generally, it's just a pain in the butt being "hobbled" like this. Plus I bit my tongue at some point during the week. So that's just painful and annoying. And using a plastic straw all week (including for coffee and soup) is irritating the roof of my mouth.

See, mostly just being a whinger.

Anyway.

I made tomato soup this week. It wasn't bad, although I possibly should have blended it with all the basil in rather than adding some more after the fact. Just led to lumps of green in the soup. Tasty lumps, but still lumps.

I also made a wholemeal loaf to go along with the soup. But I just don't seem to be able to get full loaves right. At least this one had the correct amount of salt in it, but it was, I think, a little underbaked. Could have done with ten more minutes or something.

I also put together the final chair for my table... so now I have a proper four person setting. I still haven't had cause to use it yet, but it's good it's complete.

Not really much else to report for this week.

Wednesday was Double DnD Day... the day game was at the other store, which means we start an hour later... and we neither finished off the game from last week, nor returned to the hardcover book we were doing before that. No, we did something entirely new and different. Something from the upcoming season. Which is one that I really don't care about. It was about what I expected... blah, blah cult, blah blah demons/devils. Not the worst "opener" I've seen, but not super impressive either.

The evening game was good... although at some point I feel like, as a group, we went from "underleveled for combat at this point in the story" to "doesn't last one round of combat". I mean that's partially because our ranger/rogue is a Min-Maxer who keeps accidentally rolling natural 20's. But also because we tend to go the "talk" rather than the "hit things" route, so we haven't really tested our skills for a while.

At the end of the game the MacGuffin machine we were dealing with accidentally MacGuffined and we were "sent back in time" to the very beginning of the hardcover. I would image that the DM is going to let us flail about in our own panic for at least the beginning of the session (I mean, I would) before the machine sends us back to the correct time again. I mean, otherwise, we'll make the fucker run the whole damn book over again.

Given my failure with the last couple of bread experiments, I went back to rolls on Thursday... although I did shove some cheese in half of them and chocolate in the other half. Perhaps not in the best possibly way, but they were very nice anyway.

Then on Friday I made another batch of the ciabatta dough to bake this morning after we got back from the supermarket.

Anyway...

This morning I got up pretty early and got the bread ready for it's second proofing, between that and getting ready, I was basically ready to go when Ma arrived.

This week I'm going to make chowder again, although I haven't necessarily decided whether or not to blend the whole thing down or to leave it chunky and then blend it on a day by day basis. The latter does sound like the better option... but Thursday is also supposed to be 30°C, so soup will seem like a bad idea probably.

We did the usual supermarket thing, came back, I threw the bread in the oven once it heated up, because fresh bread is the best.

Then we headed into the city because Ma wanted to grab some stuff at the Lincraft sale. So we did that, made a couple of other brief stops and then called it quits for the day.

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photo saturday: face

This week has been... challenging.

Let's do this one day at a time, shall we?

Sunday I made chicken noodle soup, and as always the secret ingredient is chorizo sausage.

I also did some more organising and straightening up for the rental inspection on Wednesday.

Monday I cleaned the kitchen... without any great speed I might add, but I also sorted out some things that might not have occurred to me otherwise, all the good stuff.

Tuesday the wheels fell off my portion of the universe.

I got up early so I could get things ready to clean the bathroom and then sweep/vacuum the floors before mopping. It should have been an easy job and I should have been done by early afternoon at the latest.

However, when I was brushing my teeth I realised that I couldn't hold water in my mouth properly to rinse. I mean I could, but as soon as I went to rinse, it would come squirting out the left side of my mouth. Very fucking weird.

I had a look at myself in the mirror and everything looked okay. Maybe I had a bit of a bloodshot eye on the left side of my left eye, but maybe that's usually there in the morning and I just never look. So I went to have breakfast. And you know how you just know what eating something you eat every morning is supposed to feel in your mouth? Yeah, it didn't feel that way. There was definitely a problem with my mouth.

I remember back... I dunno, let's call it ten years, one of the women I worked with just had a stroke in the middle of the work day, in the middle of the office. And that part of that was that one side of her face just went slack.

So guess what conclusion I started walking in the direction of. Rather than just going "nah, it's fine" and getting on with my day, I changed from "cleaning the house" clothes to "going to the emergency room" clothes, and headed out to the bus stop. Going outside, I realised that while I was clearly squinting my right eye, I couldn't feel anything happening on the left eye. And the bus wasn't going to be there for another quarter of an hour.

Suffice to say I went back to my apartment, got my car keys and drove to the Royal Adelaide. Yeah, maybe not the best idea ever if I was having a stroke, or needed to be admitted or any other incalculable number of potential options, but I couldn't stand around like an idiot... plus the fact that the hospital is now just "outside" the city compared with where it previously was, I didn't particularly want to walk all that way.

Anyway, I got to the hospital, did the check in thing and sat down to wait. I had brought my book with me, so that made things not seem as long. But I'm pretty sure that I'd been placed on the triage list right after the few people who came in before me, but before everyone who came in after, with the exception of one old lady who came in by ambulance.

Even so, I think I had a hour wait, give or take, possibly a bit less.

The very nice doctor man (they're generally very nice doctor men, or else if you're a doctor man who looks after me when I'm in the ER then I think you're very nice... I'm easy like that) saw me after a couple of minutes of pulse and blood pressure and all that good stuff.

He asked me to tell the same story I'd told about three times at that stage, asked me a few extra questions, made me make a bunch of faces and expressions, then got me to put my arms in the appropriate diagnostic position while he pulled, then I pushed, swap position, repeat until decision.

I expected him to do the thing they usually do in these situations... disappear for five or more minutes to consult with some random faceless colleague before coming back to tell me whatever he had to tell me. That isn't what happened.

Instead, once the arm pushing and pulling and facial gymnastics were done he just looked at me and said "it's not a stroke"... which was a giant relief, not gunna lie. And then he followed it up with "have you heard of Bell's Palsy", which I had, but not enough to remember what the hell it was if I ever actually knew.

Turns out that it's a mostly inexplicable infection of the major nerve that controls the muscles of one side of the face or the other. It comes on in about 72 hours and takes up to a month to return to normality, with it disappearing completely in the majority of cases.

But at least it wasn't a stroke.

Although, fun fact I discovered... if you are having a stroke it doesn't affect the muscles that control your eyebrows... the rest of (half) your face, sure, but not the eyebrow. People are weird.

I had to wait around a bit while he wrote up a letter for my GP and a prescription for all the lovely drugs (in this case, steroids and anti viral medication)... but they moved me out of the treatment bay so they could actually use it.

I think I got to the hospital some time around 10:30am and I was home again just before 1pm. Not the worst ER experience I have to say. And that does include the trip across the road to the chemist to get all the lovely drugs and some eye drops.

And then I still had to clean the bathroom and mop the floors.

At least it kept me occupied and gave me something else to think about that wasn't half my face no longer functioning.

It did give me considerably less time than I might otherwise have had though, but I got everything all sorted and clean and ready for Wednesday's inspection. Including a call to Ma when I was finished cleaning (and she was home from work) about all the drama. I put some tape over my eye overnight just to ensure it stayed closed like it's supposed to, and called it a day.

Wednesday I spent essentially the whole day playing DnD and let my rental inspection happen on it's own time.

My face (or half thereof) had clearly progressed or not progressed, or whatever the right term is. Suffice to say that I could tell it was "further along" (I'm avoiding words like "worse" right now) and I could only half raise an eyebrow on that side.

It also got progressively harder to pronounce my B's and my P's throughout the day. I'm not sure whether more or less talking all day sped up the timeline or not, I would suggest not so much to be honest.

But we had a new DM for this particular part of the adventure, and as is always the case, those people who are excellent at playing their characters also turn out to be excellent DMs. And it was a smaller table size, only four of us, so all in all, a pretty good time was had.

And I got to play a character I haven't touched in forever and work out who the hell he needs to be... or who I'm going to turn him into. Which is always great.

The only issue came at lunch time, when I went down to the food court and looked around and wondered what in the ever loving hell I would be able to eat for lunch. I'd already worked out that I was unable to drink from a pop top bottle of water, so I did a lot of wandering before ending up getting chicken nuggets. Still a challenge, but I made do.

After DnD I headed home, found the "Thank You" card from the inspection (I swear that they are never consistent about what they leave behind, ranging from the card to nothing to a full report sheet), and made the dough for ciabatta loaf that needed to be left to rise for 18 hours, before heading out for the evening game.

We've all been freaking out about taking on a beholder (a big floating eyeball monster with a bunch of eyeballs on stalks for the uninitiated) since our last session a couple of weeks ago, and we geared up with a plan and whatnot... only to have our ranger/rogue score two natural 20's, one in the surprise round and one in his first attack, single-handedly killing the monster.

The amusing thing was that the ranger/rogue's player had spent the previous two weeks learning to 3D print so that he could print a beholder mini and then paint it in order for us to have it for the game. And it was out on the table for a grand total of about 5 minutes. I mean he did it to himself.

Thursday was mostly okay... except by that stage I realised that a) I need to eat my breakfast with a teaspoon in order to prevent appearing to be a toddler with a face full of breakfast and b) I need to drink all liquids, both hot and cold with a straw.

So yes, that does in fact mean that I have used a straw in my hot coffee during the latter half of this week. Come at me bro.

But seriously, it meant that my face had finally settled into the final "nothing much works on the right side" final form it'll be in for the remainder of the month more or less.

The only thing of interest I did on Thursday was turn the dough from Wednesday afternoon into an amazing and huge (yet very crusty, in the good way) loaf of ciabatta bread. By the time I got around to shaping the dough and then letting it proof again, I think it spent about 20 hours sitting around doing sweet fuck all and about 10-15 minutes of me actually interacting with it in any way, plus 45 minutes in the oven.

I also decided to introduce the hand mixer to my chicken noodle soup, since it was just getting too damn hard to eat, given that the teaspoon method takes for fucking ever. I also resorted to a big fat chunky straw for what was left after some bread dunking. This is my life right now. Straws.

Friday I had my GP appointment in the early afternoon, but on the way to the bus stop my back had a bit of a dummy spit at me. I mean I get it... sitting in the ER for however long, plus cleaning the floor and moving furniture and whatnot, then the usual Wednesday sitfest, I totally get it. Annoying, but I get it. I might need to go and see my chiro early next week, even though I only saw her last Friday. Again, annoying, but I'd rather go than not go.

I also made the dry mix of a cinnamon and cranberry loaf before I left... except it turns out that instead of putting 1.5 teaspoons of salt in, I put 1.5 tablespoons (or 4.5 teaspoons) in. And that's never good (more on that later).

To be honest I probably could have skipped going to the GP entirely. I only did it because the lovely ER doctor recommended it, but it turned out to be a big nothing really. I mean don't get me wrong, my GP is a lovely old duffer, and he did make a suggestion about the steroid tablets which I'll probably follow, but it was really just a "how you going" check and not much of anything really.

He did comment on how well I was handling it... and yeah I get that, but that really comes down to two factors. The first being that at least it wasn't a fucking stroke. The second being from an episode (A Quarter to Midnight) of the 1980's British kid's show Press Gang... "panic later, it's an old girl's trick" (that's how I remember it anyway)... there's nothing to panic about yet, so why panic now, if I need to panic later I'd rather save my energy for that.

Mostly though it was about ten minutes of chat and then I came home again.

And I set the bread off, but honestly, it did feel like something wasn't completely right in the first hour or so... but I assumed it was more about the fact that the recipe had milk and sugar in it, as opposed to the excess of salt.

Today I got up earlier than usual (well, with the exception of this week anyway)... because there's something about waking up with your eye taped shut that just engenders a sense of wanting to be up and about the day... plus I had dough to shape.

So I got the ill-fated loaf ready for it's second proofing, and was ready to go before Ma even got here. Which meant that we had an early start at the supermarket and were back earlier than usual.

I decided on tomato soup this week. I mean I definitely needed something that was already blended... and I haven't made tomato soup this season yet.

Then we came back here, I put the bread in the oven and we did the usual unpacking before trying the bread. I felt like it was way too salty, but I'd also put some salted butter on it, so I honestly couldn't completely tell. But later when the bread was totally cool and I didn't add any butter, it was super obvious. A shame really. But we'll call that a trial run and try again later.

We ended up going to IKEA to get the last of the chairs for my table, but we only did the lower floor, because there wasn't much point doing the whole thing.

And that was it really.

Like I said, a challenging week... with more to come it would seem.

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